Breaking: Court disqualifies 10 of 13 witnesses Obi presented

Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, provided 13 witnesses, but the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal claimed that 10 of them were unreliable.

This was said on Wednesday by Justice Haruna Tsammani, who was appointed to rule on the Obi and LP’s substantive petition.

Tsammani said that Obi summoned 13 witnesses, referred to as PW1 through PW13, who gave testimony. She further noted that only three of the 13 witnesses had statements made under oath that were included with the petition.

The remaining 10 witnesses, according to the Justice, were subpoenaed, and their sworn witness statements were not submitted until after the hearing had begun.

Every sworn witness statement must be submitted with the petition, according to Tsammani, in accordance with section 285 of the Nigerian constitution, section 137(7) of the Electoral Act 2022, and other requirements.

According to the Supreme Court’s precedent, an election petition’s contents cannot be changed after the allotted 21 days have passed since the petition’s filing.

The Justice added that no new statement under oath may be filed after the allotted time has passed because the respondents won’t have a chance to reply.

Tsammani claimed that despite being aware of the legal requirement for the filing of sworn witness statements, the petitioners still went ahead and presented 10 witnesses without the sworn witness statements that had previously been filed with the petition.

Later on, more information…